


To Die For

by writeringoodfaith



Series: Love Square One-Shots [4]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Ladynoir | Adrien Agreste as Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng as Ladybug, Little Kitty On A Roof All Alone Without His Lady, No Character Death, One Shot, Yearning, angsty boi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:01:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26909296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writeringoodfaith/pseuds/writeringoodfaith
Summary: Adrien sits ruminating on a rooftop, blinking up at the open night sky. He feels so lonely sometimes it suffocates him. Cats aren't meant to live in cages. All suited up but with nowhere to be, he dreams about his lady until a soft thump behind him indicates she's come to join him. She falls asleep on his lap, but as he brushes his claws carefully through her soft hair, he knows he's the one who is dreaming.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Series: Love Square One-Shots [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1795369
Comments: 16
Kudos: 35





	To Die For

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks Captain Meowvel for being my sounding board, my writing conscience, my yo diggity number one fan and my favourite blond/e superhero/ray of sunshine ever (out of an array that may or may not be inclusive of fictional characters).
> 
> As to this one-shot, a few months ago I compiled (with the good captain's assistance, naturally) a Love Square playlist and I had a listen to Sam Smith's To Die For. Through their crooning vocals and gorgeous voice, I saw Adrien, transformed as Chat Noir, sitting all alone on a roof, feeling the feels and thinking about his lady. (To maximise your reading experience, I recommend popping the song on in the background! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLdG6rhZ77E )
> 
> To my third favourite love square ship - don't feel that I care about you less just because I love Marichat and Adrienette more. Ladynoir is precious and perfect. Adrien is selfless and his love is so pure.
> 
> This one's for you, Chat boy.

I look for you.

Your blue eyes.

In the eyes of all those who pass by me.

Paris has a population of 2.148 million people.

Would I recognise the exact shade of blue without your red mask to frame it? If our hands touched without leather and latex, would my molecules vibrate more knowing they were meeting yours?

My unmasked face is scattered throughout our city. On billboards, at bus stops, and in ads interrupting the media you consume.

Have you ever looked at my smile and recognised it? My hair is different, my eyes are human and normal. But they're the same shade of green - just like my mother's. My grin is stifled, my face airbrushed and plastered with makeup - but it is still me. Behind a different mask, I suppose.

Every now and again, I have these nights when not even Plagg waxing lyrical about cheese can fill the cavernous emptiness of my bedroom.

The piano does not help either. It reminds me of my mother who used to watch me play, her eyes shining in adoration as she'd interrupt the mock bow at the end of my performance in a hug so excitable it felt like an affectionate attack on my limbs. It reminds me of a father I used to have, whose nimble fingers led by example and showcased mastery over the monochrome keys themselves before admonishing me to practice.

On nights like this, I watch old videos of my mother who documented my every birthday with religious fervour, our grins identical to the bright candles that wink out of existence with my eager breath. I linger that little bit longer over dinner hoping this evening will be the one that father manages to take a break from his work and join me. Nathalie stares resolutely at her tablet, the tapping of her stylus my only source of conversation. I pass by the front door on the way up to my room and offer a greeting to The Gorilla. Having observed which action figures are missing from his collection, I bring out my latest find to share with him. His stoic expression softens into childlike glee as he accepts my offering. But eventually, he looks at the time, and then he too turns away to leave the mansion and return home for the night. He too leaves me alone.

On nights like this, Plagg doesn't try the Cheer Up Cheese is Here For You speech. He waits, those scrutinising eyes glowing in the dark I've allowed to settle in my room like a shadow. He waits and offers support in the only way he knows how.

As I transform, he is sucked into the ring and the metamorphosis engulfs me.

Cats weren't meant to live in cages.

The different roofs that I choose to settle on each night have but one thing in common: a view of the open sky.

You can't get too predictable when you're a superhero using civilian homes as your resting place.

Sometimes I get found out and I have to leave early before the photographers and fans come. I will fake-smile for my job. For my father. But being Chat Noir is for me.

And I will not fake-smile for that.

As the vigour of spring has decayed into the stickiness of summer, nights like these have crept up on me with increasing regularity. This hot weather reminds me of the last days before mother left. Or disappeared. Or was taken away.

I'm not sure what I believe. Father's own perspective changes depending on when I catch him willing to talk about her. Most of the time I try, it's like talking to a blank wall.

On a good night, when Lady Luck decides to smile down on this lonely kitty on a roof… I am uninterrupted. And I spend the time pondering my lady.

Her pink lips open as she exhales with exhaustion after a training exercise during patrol.

Her tiny freckles barely visible and underlining her mask.

The red ribbon of her hair dances in the wind, her hair fluttering alongside it, as she races past me. Not because I've let her win on purpose - though sometimes I will joke that I have done that to rile her up - but because when Ladybug moves she is a flawless work of art. Though not an artist myself, I have always considered myself a connoisseur of appreciating what is fine and beautiful.

To Paris, Ladybug is the superhero always ready to save the day. But to me, she's just a girl. An amazing, incredible, unbelievable girl. The real Ladybug is all of these small moments I am lucky enough to capture, like snapshots frozen in time and imprinted onto my heart.

It's her hand on my shoulder as we face press releases together, as natural and unthinking to both of us as taking our next breath.

It's the paradox of her rolling her eyes at my puns and yet cheekily showing off her own wordplay skills whenever she feels the situation calls for it. Her cleverness utterly annihilates me every time - and in the best way.

It's the lucky charm she calls into existence. Her leg popping up in a signature pose I have often wondered was intentional as she hurls her yoyo sky high. The calculating glance at her surroundings and the click, like a lightbulb going off in her head when she knows exactly what to do. She sees solutions to save the day when all I see is a street lamp, an akumatized villain charging at us and my lady.

When I'm sitting on a lonely rooftop with structural integrity so questionable I think only a cat could find a way to settle itself on it, I think of my lady and I watch the citizens of Paris live their bustling lives below me.

Sometimes I see couples walking hand in hand and I invent backstories for them.

They met during college - in physics class. She was his tutor and brought textbooks to their first date because she misunderstood.

This couple met five decades ago, when they were in the bloom of their youth. Their parents did not support their relationship, but instead of breaking up, they hid it. They ran away from home, and started a company together selling… socks! They are equal partners in every way. And now, half a century gone, their little sock shop by the river has turned into a sock empire selling merchandise around the globe. And most importantly, all these years later, they still have each other. I can see it in the way their twinkling eyes and wizened fingers meet each other's at the end of each day as they stroll nightly along the Seine. Wrinkled flesh, arthritis and a cruel world telling them their dreams were destined to fail weren't enough to break the love they had for each other. Love presses on.

This other couple is in love with each other and neither will say it. But I can see it. It's the way she laughs at his jokes, and the way he cracks them endlessly whilst others look on with concerned looks of judgment stuck on their nosy faces. Maybe they overheard some of his more desperate attempts to make her laugh. And despite their incredulity, he succeeds every time. Her laughter rings like a peal as I settle on my back and turn my gaze towards the sky instead.

This is what I want.

It is not what I have.

I feel like a fool for dreaming.

But I have to admit... On the very best nights of nights like these, a little thump behind me means that my lady has also been feeling restless. That she has sought me on her tracker. And she is here to join me.

"What's up, Kitty Cat?"

She calls and my ears twitch with the pleasure of hearing her voice. I can't control my ears and my tail. Or, well, I can control them. But I can't stop them from telling the story of how happy I am when Ladybug comes to visit me.

I know she doesn't appreciate me confessing my undying love to her, or teasing her, or flirting with her, or even caring about her in more than a platonic fashion. So I keep it cool when I reply.

"The fireflies. Stuck up in that big-bluish black thing."

I can hear it in her voice that she is grinning without having to turn to her. "Oh really?" She says. "I always thought they were balls of gas burning billions of miles away."

I can't resist the urge to look at her anymore. My head turns and I can't stop the little sharp intake of breath as I drink in her sight, every curve of her figure illuminated by the City of Lights shining behind her.

"Ladybug, with you, everything's gas."

Her chuckle comes out as a snort and it's not a melodious Disney princess laugh but it is my absolute favourite sound in the whole world.

She settles herself next to me and I make a note to amend my previous analysis of this roof: this roof is so precariously made that only a cat _or a bug_ could settle on it.

When she leans her hands back to rest on them, she probably doesn't realise it, but her fingers brush by my ears to settle in my hair ever so slightly. I still. Completely. I will not be the reason she realises she's touching me. I am already lying down so I try my best to force my traitorous respiratory system into taking steady breaths, my overactive cardiovascular system into pumping blood around my body at a regular pace.

So many things in my body while I am transformed get enhanced. My vision. My sense of smell. My strength. My speed. And my touch. Somehow, even though the ears are part of the suit, they feel incredibly sensitive as she shifts slightly and a single fingernail scratches against one of them.

"Did you just purr?" She loves to tease how cat-like I become when I am Chat Noir.

I don't deign to give her a response.

Sometimes this is the best way to not accidentally flirt with her, or cross the boundaries between us that she's put up.

She decides to copy my position and does not ask for my permission before resting her own head on my stomach, her legs following the downward slope of the roof.

It's utterly unsafe.

Gravity is not on her side.

Does Ladybug not believe in the laws of physics?

So I sit up - she makes a little complaining noise as I adjust my position - and reposition her head into my lap. I place a hand under her shoulder to secure her and she curls onto her side into it.

"I'm going to take a nap," she announces.

In response, with my free hand, I tuck some of her loose hair properly behind her ear. She nestles further in and then, in only a matter of moments, her eyes have shut. And though they haven't shut all the way, her breathing has become slow and rhythmic and I'm pretty sure she's asleep.

I look up at the night sky again, her weight and warmth on my lap like a blanket.

In the daytime, my name is Adrien Agreste. But at night, and as emergencies require, I transform into the Parisian Superhero known as Chat Noir. As both identities, I may not have much going on in the way of personal relationships. But I look at this girl, sleeping on my lap. She is the love of my life. And I long for her in a way that I know scares her. In a way that I know she does not and cannot reciprocate.

My lady may not love me back. But she gives me a reason to live.

She gives me somebody to die for.

**Author's Note:**

> If To Die For is Chat Noir's anthem of anguish for his part in the Ladynoir corner of the love square, what song is Ladybug's?


End file.
